Investigating the effectiveness of Globalvoice CALL software in native Japanese English speech

Abstract

Many variables exist in the evaluation of the speech of non-native speakers of English. In previous research, rhythmic accent and pauses are more salient than segmental features in English utterances to make one’s speech more intelligible. In this regard, prosodic features such as intonation and rhythm are crucial in comprehensible speech. One of the main goals of English education in Japan is to help Japanese students speak English more intelligibly in order to be more clearly understood while taking part in international communication. In this talk, several key parameters such as speech duration, speech power, and F0 (pitch), are all introduced to help determine to what extent Japanese students are able to improve their English pronunciation through the use of Globalvoice CALL software. Globalvoice CALL enables students to input English words or sentences for the purpose of practicing their pronunciation and prosody in order to reduce their Japanese-accented speech. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of Globalvoice CALL software to improve the English pronunciation of Japanese EFL learners. Student productions of English sentences were analyzed with regard to speech duration, speech power, and F0 (pitch) to determine how much progress was attained in their English pronunciation and overall proficiency. The results showed improvement in acoustic properties between the pre- and post-recorded readings, indicating the software helped the students to improve their English pronunciation.